


Nell'oscurità, Rosetta

by antigone_ks



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Captain America: The First Avenger - Fandom, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Awkward Sex, Dubious Consent, Extremely Dubious Consent, F/M, Period Typical Attitudes, Rape/Non-con Elements, Sexual Coercion, Virgin Steve Rogers, basically all of the Howling Commandos/original female character, but everyone except Steve is offscreen, but not for long, non-con sex work, period typical attitudes about STIs, period typical attitudes about sex, sex in wartime, which is to say not entirely accurate or polite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-07-10 12:45:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19905922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antigone_ks/pseuds/antigone_ks
Summary: “It’s been weeks since we were near a city and the fellas need to relax. They’re going to if she’s willing, unless you tell them not to. Just figured you might want first crack.”“Does she look willing to you?”Bucky gazes at the woman, winks when she meets his eye. She doesn’t smile, but she doesn’t look away. “There’s willing and then there’s willing, Steve,” he says, and Steve is forcibly reminded that Bucky’s spent a lot more time here, a lot more time in a war zone, and he might be intimately familiar with all the things Steve’s barely imagined.***He's a soldier, just like all the rest, and a GI knows the value of a can of C-rations when he wants some attention.**Heed the warnings & tags. This is not a romance.**





	Nell'oscurità, Rosetta

They’re three weeks out, not even the full squad. Just Steve and Bucky, Jones, Dugan, and Dernier, traipsing across the Italian countryside looking for a small but vital Hydra cell.

They’ve found nothing.

Literally almost nothing. Farms abandoned where the folks had refugeed out, some livestock, and not a trace of Hydra. Steve wonders if this is a wild-goose chase, if Colonel Phillips is messing with him for some reason.

Then they’d found the little farm, with a woman and three girls. The woman had brandished a pistol at them; the girls had run inside. Steve had put his hands up, then pulled off the cowl so he wouldn’t look like a masked intruder. “ _Pace, pace_ ,” Bucky had shouted, “ _niente male_ ,” which Steve thought probably wasn’t even correct, but seemed to do the trick. The girls had stayed inside, but the woman had let them get as close as the well. After watching them splash for a while and slip back into their wrung-out undershirts, she’d brought out some old linens to dry with, and finally let them into the house.

Now Steve can hear Dernier, in his classroom Italian, and Bucky, with his backstreet lingo, asking careful questions and reciting the answers in a mix of English and French. There were soldiers here a week ago, the woman says, Germans, moving north. No, nothing special about them. Just more Germans – _maledetti_ , she says fiercely, damned. She describes their uniforms under Dernier’s patient questioning, and Steve feels the tension release before frustration rises again. _Not Hydra_ , and _good_ , and _then where the hell are they_? No one else has come near the little farm since, until the Howlies got there. 

They each turn out a can of C-rations, meat stew with vegetables, and Bucky gets Dernier to ask if she’ll cook for them. He turns on the ol’ Bucky charm, even with the few polite words he knows. Steve hears _bella signora_ and sees the woman stiffen, then relax as she understands what they want. It’s just been so long since they had home cookin’, ma’am, and they’re glad to share rations with the little family if it means they can sit around a real dinner table like human beings. Steve imagines Bucky would have thrown in a “shucks” if he’d thought the woman would understand it.

She adds in a splash of wine and some green herbs Steve doesn’t recognize to the rations. One of the girls helps, sliding around the edge of the room warily until Gabe gets an odd look on his face and suggests they all move to the fireplace. When they’re all gathered, all on one side of the room, the girl moves more surely, more quickly. Steve glances at Gabe, questioning. 

“Out of arms’ reach,” he mutters, and Steve feels something twist in his stomach.

_Of course._

The woman starts filling bowls and setting them on the little table, and Steve gets Dernier to tell her to go eat with her girls; the men can fill their own bowls. The table is too small for all of them, so he and Dugan sit on the floor, bowl balanced in his hands. It’s the best damned thing Steve’s ever eaten.

He and Dugan do the washing up, waving the woman away. She bundles the girls upstairs, hurrying them along in a clatter of feet and whispers and the scrape of furniture moving across the floor when the door closes. She stands at the bottom of the stairs, watching the men sprawling around her sitting room from under her lashes, and Dernier begins a soft conversation that doesn’t seem to put her at ease.

She isn’t young, but isn’t old, still a handsome woman. Her dark hair is smooth, with no touch of gray, and her face is only gently lined. Steve wonders why he noticed, and catches Bucky watching him. Bucky leans against the little sink and keeps his voice low.

“What do you think, Stevie?”

“About what?” Bucky rolls his eyes like Steve ought to know, then tilts his head toward the woman.

“Not bad. Bet she was real pretty a few years ago.”

Beside him, Dugan makes an agreeable noise, and Steve’s eyes dart between him and Bucky. He feels like Bucky is sizing him up, like he’s some punk in a back alley who doesn’t understand what’s about to go down, who’s stepped in the middle of something that – 

“Buck, no.” He forgets to whisper, and everyone’s head turns toward him. Bucky grabs him by the arm.

“It’s been weeks since we were near a city and the fellas need to relax. They’re going to if she’s willing, unless you tell them not to. Just figured you might want first crack.”

“Does she look willing to you?”

Bucky gazes at the woman, winks when she meets his eye. She doesn’t smile, but she doesn’t look away. “There’s willing and then there’s willing, Steve,” he says, and Steve is forcibly reminded that Bucky’s spent a lot more time here, a lot more time in a war zone, and he might be intimately familiar with all the things Steve’s barely imagined.

“They’re short on food, and we got plenty of rations,” Dugan says, low. “She can get to a town, cigarettes’ll bring in some good money, too.”

_Are they all_ . . .?

“There’s five of us!” he hisses. Bucky stares at him

“You never went to a park in Rome after dark, did’ya?”

“Did you – no, nevermind.” Steve shakes his head. “Why d’you think I want in on this?”

“Gotta get your pickle wet sometime, Stevie. Better you do it like this first, so you don’t embarrass yourself in front of a gal you like.” Bucky winks at him, and Steve thinks of Peggy, all dark eyes and hair and a chest he just wants to burrow into and wonders if she knows about this, that this kind of thing goes on. What would she think of him? But she’s been here, too. She’s been here almost as long as Bucky, and even if you don’t talk about it in front of nice ladies, they always seem to know what men get up to. She sure as hell knows more than Steve does.

And she’s practical, like Bucky. She might agree with him.

That’s just rationalizing, and Steve ought to be ashamed of it, but something else is crowding out that shame. 

She’s still a pretty woman, whatever Bucky said, dark eyes and hair, and if her figure is thicker than _don’t even think her name, not like this_ than some other women, Steve has always appreciated the female form in all its variety. 

He could.

He could do it, and he’d be real decent to her, and Dugan is right about the rations and cigarettes.

“Yeah,” he says, letting go of a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. “Yeah, okay.”

His hands are shaking already when he reaches into his pack, and – “How – how many?”

“At least two,” Bucky says promptly, and Steve’s head whips up accusingly. He shouldn’t know this. Bucky shrugs. “You could get it for one in Rome. Probably could here, too.” He looks Steve in the eyes, almost defiant, but his voice is gentle. “She’s got kids, though, and her man’s gone.” Steve takes out four M-units, thinks for a minute, and adds a B-unit with the candy, and two packs of Chesterfields. Someone snorts. He ignores them.

At last he looks up. The woman stands silently, looking fixedly at a spot on the floor. Her hands are shaking, clenched on the fabric of her skirt. Steve puts the rations – his payment – on the table. 

“Jacques?”

Dernier speaks carefully, picking over the words, and Steve hears _vergine_ and _ragazzo dolce_ and then _non preoccupare_ , as he sits down at the foot of the stairs, _starò qui_.

At last she moves, coming swiftly down the steps past Dernier. She opens a door off the sitting room and jerks her head at Steve. He swallows hard and follows. As the door closes, he hears Dugan asking who brought the cards.

It’s a dark little low-ceilinged room, barely large enough to hold the bed, and Steve feels like a giant banging his shins on the metal bedstead. There’s a bit of light coming from the window, and he can make out the woman moving around to the other side. She gestures at a lamp.

“ _Sì_.”

A match flares, the lamp catches. There’s a quilt on her bed, bright jumbled colors, the most cheerful thing Steve’s seen in weeks. The sight of it makes him feel awful, like an intruder, like he’s about to spoil something sweet and innocent and homey, some inner part of her. He turns toward the door and she’s there, hand on his arm, not quite meeting his eyes. He raises her hand to his lips and watches her eyelashes flutter microscopically, and decides.

But the quilt has to come off. 

He folds it carefully and hands it to her, watches as she slides it under the bed. She straightens and starts tugging at the buttons on the front of her dress. Her hands are shaking, it takes some time for each one to come loose, and she’s only halfway down the bodice when Steve steps up and covers her hands with his own.

“Shouldn’t I – I mean, I should do that?” He hates the uncertainty in his voice, and she can’t understand him anyway. They stand, hands together.

“What’s your name?” he asks. He’s doing this all wrong – he should have known her name before he started touching her clothing, touching her bed, or else he shouldn’t care at all. “Your name? I’m Steve.”

The woman lifts her head, stares direct at his ear. “Rosetta.”

“Rosetta.” His breath comes out in a whoosh. “Rosetta, that’s pretty, that’s, that’s real bella.”

Her mouth twitches, and he feels a little better. Maybe this is how he can talk to women – in a language he doesn’t know, after paying them.

“Rosetta,” he says again, and bends his head to hers. His lips brush her cheek; he chases her mouth, frustrated when she turns away. He grips the back of her head, holds her still, feels her struggle as he presses his mouth to hers. Her lips are too firm, unyielding – he thinks of Private Lorraine and runs his tongue against the seam of the woman’s mouth – and feels a spike of irritation when she pushes against his chest. _Shouldn’t you know what to do_? he thinks, and _Are you trying to make this harder_?

There’s a piece of him that’s ashamed for it. Jacques told her he’d be nice to her, or sweet, or something like that. Steve steadies his breathing and moves down her neck, mouthing gently, hoping she’ll relax. If she doesn’t, is it him? Is he doing it wrong, or it just that all of _this_ is wrong?

His hands move down to her bodice, hovering. This is it, the farthest he’s gone, and it feels like a point of no return. Like there’s a difference between the kind of necking he’d see at any party and, and . . . his mind goes to _petting_ , which he’d also seen at the less public kind of parties, but now seems like a juvenile way to think of it.

_I am going to touch this woman_ , he thinks, deliberately, and then he does. 

She’s so soft, her flesh yielding to him, and he’s hard so immediately, so startlingly, that he goes light-headed. He sways, clutching at her, pulling too hard at her dress. A button pops off and rolls under the bed and –

There’s a knock at the door. 

Steve’s head jerks up and he looks at the woman. She meets his gaze for the first time, eyes wide. He half-turns and opens the door a crack to see Gabe holding out a rubber in a paper sleeve.

“Forgot this, Cap,” he says. “She looks clean, but it’s a good habit to get into.”

Steve murmurs his thanks and shuts the door as he hears Gabe say, exasperated, “doesn’t even have her clothes off yet.”

“We got all night, Cap – don’t rush yourself,” Dugan shouts, to general laughter.

He’s too embarrassed about his men to be embarrassed about undressing her, so he supposes he should thank them later for _being sons-a-bitches_ the help. His fingers are big and clumsy, unaccustomed even still to his own damned buttons, and even though he’s not shaking anymore he’s not moving at any appreciable speed. There’s part of him thankful for that, as her dress begins to open and he can see soft, sun-freckled skin appear above her brassiere, and a part of him that wants to see _all_ of that skin, right now.

He kisses the tops of her breasts, one then the other, breath hot and wet against her skin. His arms snake around her waist, move lower, and he’s got a handful of generous backside, holding her against him, rocking against her until he’s gasping and dizzy and half a second away from finishing in his pants. He pulls away with some effort, fumbling at the next few buttons until he can slip the dress down her hips and help her step out of it.

His hand brushes the exposed skin between her brassiere and _panties, you’re touching a dame’s panties_ , and she trembles, breath coming faster. Steve considers for a second, wonders if she’d mind if he – remembers that she can’t mind anything he wants to do to her, and slips his hand between her legs. She jerks, then holds herself stiff and still as his fingers explore the cotton, the heat beneath, as he cups her and presses the heel of his palm against her mound. A tiny tremble ripples through her thighs.

She has to handle the bra; Steve can’t make heads or tails of it. She turns away and does some complicated undergarment magic as he drags her panties down to her ankles and presses his lips to her buttocks. She’s just soft _all over_ , and he could stay crouching at her feet for years if she’d only let him fill his hands with all of her flesh, over and over, touching every inch of her.

But she pulls away and lays down on the bed, and he’s still completely dressed. He’s got his boots on, for Christ’s sake, and she doesn’t seem inclined to help him get out of them. How naked does he need to be? He could just get his . . . get his cock out, it’d probably work like that, and then he could join her on the bed and go back to touching her real quick, but appealing as that is, he wants to feel her skin against his. He remembers to take the rubber out of his pocket and throw it onto the sheets before he starts trying to unbutton his pants and yank his undershirt off at the same time. His trousers catch on his boots, and he swears viciously _in front of a lady_ but it’s okay; she can’t understand, and yet the look on her face says she knows close enough what he’s saying, or maybe she’s just laughing at the way he’s trying to hop out of that last boot.

His heart is pounding like it did before the serum when he’d walked more than a few blocks in the summer heat, and he thinks he ought to be embarrassed, but seeing her smile even a little makes him feel like this is going to be okay, she’s not as scared of him anymore. It’s sobering, though, to realize that having a gal not be real scared of him is his threshold for fucking, and he pushes that thought to the back of his mind.

She trembles when he kneels on the edge of the bed, drags his hand down her body from her throat to her . . . It’s hidden under a thatch of hair, but he knows what’s underneath. He’s seen pictures, and Dugan’s got a stack of Tijuana Bibles big enough keep them alive in a blizzard. He’s just never . . . 

The hair looks wiry, but it’s soft as the rest of her, and Steve wants to collapse in gratitude that he’s lived long enough to know what a woman’s . . . what a woman feels like, there. Her legs part, and his fingers find the seam of her. She’s damp, a little, but not enough – she makes a pained little noise when he tries to delve deeper and he pulls back hurriedly.

“Sorry, sorry – despace – dispierto –“ he can’t think of the word, if he ever knew it. Bucky’s told him about third base, about what a gal feels like when she’s really hot to trot, how wet and hot she’s supposed to be when you get your fingers in her, and this isn’t it. She looks at him for a long moment, then seems to come to a decision and tugs his head down to hers.

_Oh – oh, yes_. Her mouth opens, his tongue dips inside, and his mind sinks into the sensation of her breath, her breasts heavy in his hands, her stomach soft and marked, her thighs generous and welcoming as they cradled him, rubbing against her, tasting the skin of her neck, her breasts, fingers digging into the pliant flesh of her hips, her . . . _her_ , wet and ready at last. He pushes his shorts down his thighs, fumbles with the rubber until she grants him the grace of helping, her small hand on his cock, then on his back, drawing him down into her and

and

and

and she’s perfect. Whatever he’d expected, whatever he’d thought it would be, this is better. He’s moving against her, inside her, frantically, desperately, mewls of anguish and bliss falling from his lips. Her arms are around him, around his shoulders, her legs splayed out as he drives into her. Her . . . she moves under him, just a little, and he cries out. The pleasure explodes from deep inside, radiating out from his spine, and he shoves deeper and stiffens, a scream caught in his throat. It lasts for hours, feels like his brain is too big for his skull, like his body has exploded into pinpoints of light, and then the world comes rushing back and he gasps for air and collapses on her.

She makes a disgruntled noise and shoves at his shoulders.

Steve flops onto the bed beside her, still panting and half-hard, shrinking inside the rubber. It’s glistening, his brain notes in a haze. Glistening with her juices. He must’ve done it okay, even if he hadn’t done it _well_ , and he rolls over to pull her into his arms and laugh into the crook of her neck. 

“Rosetta,” he says, and kisses the side of her face, running his hands along her body until she slaps them away and shoves at him, pushing him off the tiny bed. He catches himself against the wall and turns to pull her back, to kiss her again, to thank her if he can remember how, but she’s shaking as she gathers his clothes, shaking and frantically scrubbing at her eyes with the heels of her hands.

He dresses in silence, facing the door, giving her what privacy he can in the little room. She pulls on an old chemise and bundles the rest of her clothing away. She won’t meet his eyes.

Dernier is still sitting on the stairs where he promised he’d be. Someone had given him a book. The others are playing poker in the sitting room. Dugan has two cans of rations and a pack of cigarettes ready, and sets them on the table where she can see. Steve is about to object – she’s upset, she doesn’t want this, this is _wrong_ – but she pulls away from him, sighs and nods, turns back into the bedroom. 

The door snicks shut behind him.

He waits for the others to joke, to tease, _how was it, Cap_? or _heard you screaming like a woman, Cap_ or _what the hell did you do to her, Cap_? 

They give him a look and Jones starts shuffling the cards again.

The air outside is cool, the breeze a comfort against his skin. He sits on the steps, studying the veins in his hands. Light spills across him when the door opens, then disappears, and Bucky drops down beside him.

“So, uh . . .” Bucky is so rarely caught without words, Steve is sure it’s just another symptom of this topsy-turvy night. “So . . .?”

“Her name’s Rosetta,” Steve says, and wipes his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> So this was actually my area of thesis research – sexual violence and coercion committed by Allied troops. Did not imagine I’d be using it this way; A+ use of degree, me. The “parks in Rome,” comment? Yeah. There was a lot of business going on.


End file.
